Judge throws out murder indictments against ex-HPD cop Goines; DA vows to pursue case

The Harris County District Attorney’s office vowed Tuesday to continue pursuing its case against Gerald Goines after a judge threw out two felony murder indictments that had been filed against the former Houston Police Department narcotics officer.

In a statement, the District Attorney’s Office said it was “shocked and tremendously disappointed” that Judge Veronica Nelson “would choose to revisit this issue knowing that her predecessor had already ruled the defendant’s position meritless.”

“The office is considering all its options, including amending the indictment, with an eye towards trying this case as soon as possible to ensure justice for the victims of these crimes,” the statement read.

After Tuesday’s hearing, Nelson – who took over the case earlier this year after District Court Judge Frank Aguilar was charged with misdemeanor assault – granted the defense’s motion to quash the indictments, siding with their contention that the formal accusations filed in January 2020 had lacked specificity and thus harmed their ability to mount an adequate defense. While Aguilar considered the motion to quash, he never issued a written ruling on the matter, according to court records.

Nelson’s ruling has the potential to imperil prosecutors’ years-long effort to hold Goines accountable for the deaths of Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas, who were killed in a firefight after Houston police officers looking for heroin stormed their Harding Street home on the afternoon of January 28, 2019. Police have accused Goines of providing false information to obtain the “no-knock” search warrant used in the raid.

A grand jury in January 2020 indicted Goines with two counts of felony murder under a provision of state law that allows a person to be charged with murder if someone is killed during the commission of a separate felony; in this case, tampering with a government record.

The defense successfully argued, however, that the indictment did not spell out which section of the tampering with a government record charge that Goines was accused of violating, arguing that each requires a different level of criminal intent and that Goines is in danger of being tried for an offense other than the one he was indicted on.

Attorneys Nicole DeBorde and George McCall Secrest Jr. also argued that the indictment did not specify which document Goines is accused of tampering with and that the former officer has a right to know the false statement that prosecutors would reply upon for a conviction.

“The indictments herein are fatally flawed and are literally riddled with a host of constitutional and statutory deficiencies which render them fundamentally defective,” the defense attorneys wrote in their motion to quash.

Prosecutors, for their part, argued in their own motions that they are not legally required to list the “manner and means” by which Goines tampered with a government record and essentially lay out their case for felony murder charges in an indictment. DeBorde and Secrest have also made “numerous” requests for discovery and the state has delivered every item the defense has requested, prosecutors said in a motion, implying that the defense attorneys have more than enough information to mount a credible defense.

Initially portrayed by former police Chief Art Acevedo as a raid in which officers came under fire by violent criminals, the Harding Street raid was the subject of an internal probe that found the department’s narcotics division suffered from sloppiness and poor supervision. Prosecutors also reviewed more than 1,400 court cases Goines worked on during his 34-year career before his 2019 retirement.

Nearly a dozen former and current police officers await trial on charges that stem from the raid and the police department’s investigation into its narcotics squad, the Houston Chronicle reported. The city of Houston is also being sued by the families of Tuttle and Nicholas in federal court.

Patrick McCann, a Houston criminal defense attorney, said he was “unpleasantly surprised” at Nelson’s decision to throw out the felony murder indictments.

“Officer Goines is entitled to and has some of the best defense a man can hope for, and that defense proved their worth today when they basically danced legal circles around the DA’s office,” he added.

McCann said District Attorney Kim Ogg leaving office at the end of this year complicates matters. “If they try to amend and bring in a different jury, it creates new problems. I’m not sure what I would do if I were them,” he said.

Meanwhile, the family of Rhogena Nicholas said in a statement that they remain “disappointed that local, state and federal authorities have either ignored this injustice or helped delay the Goines murder prosecution.”

“Justice in the HPD Harding Street killings remains a far-off prospect, at least in the hands of the U.S. Attorney and District Attorney offices,” the statement read.

“The legal explanations aside, we’re now in a sixth year of a taxpayer-funded cover-up of these murders. The Nicholas family still will not give up its ongoing fight to reveal the truth of what happened before, during and after the killing of Rhogena.”